Windlane
Flats Primer
Milkfish
Steve Jeston finds milkfish
in windlanes.

It all began in my childhood really, watching these big,
strong, silver fish cruising Townsville’s Aplin Weir every day
after school. I was usually the first of the ten-year-olds there
after school as I lived very close to the action.
Back then my tackle was very basic. A spin rod loaded
with ten pound line and a handful of white bucktail jigs. The
tarpon were easy and so were the small barra.The larger
barra were easy too – catch a tarpon around six inches
long and bash him out on an 7/0 hook with my Dad’s eighty
pound handline. One was enough for dinner that night.
But it was this other fish which I had witnessed other anglers
catching, not often or with any great understanding, but they
would occasionally catch them nonetheless. It turns out
they were milkfish (or Chanos chanos to the scientific types).
These critters would loll around the surface in and around
the current formed by wet season runoff, seemingly eating
something that I could never quite see. Tarpon would do the
same but they were easy to hook. It frustrated the hell out of
me, even at that age.
I haven’t forgotten my first milkfish hookup and neither
did my Shakespeare 2400 reel. I broke him off and lost
my bucktail jig. He was one cranky little fellow. My second
hookup on a six pounder proved more successful.
A couple of years later I purchased my first flyrod (a Diawa
Phantom eight weight) from Lounds Fishing Tackle in
Townsville. Back at Aplin Weir the tarpon and barra still
proved pretty easy. Those milkfish were in trouble now – I
THOUGHT! With some budgie feathers tied to a smallish
hook with rod binding thread I caught a procession of
tarpon. One day though, to my complete surprise, I caught
a milkfish. More by good fortune than good management,
but me and that Phantom whooped and hollered like
cowboys on a muster.
My next encounter was again in the Ross River in Townsville.
I distinctly remember it was Easter and unusually cool
and still in the early morning. The milkfish were up on the
surface in cruise mode doing something I couldn’t quite
see. This was probably my first sight cast fish. I had to run
after the fish because my twelve pound Amilan S backing
was taken from Dad’s cupboard (sorry Dad) and there
wasn’t much of it.
Since then I had not caught these speedsters until fairly
recently.
ABOVE: Milkfish have remained the elusive holy grail of fly fishing
around the globe. Given the results to date, fishing in windlanes
might make this species far more accessible.
OPPOSITE: Windlanes – one part of a three part puzzle.
The other two are a dead drift retrieve, and small flies.
RESEARCH
Milkfish are a relatively common fish and I have seen many
in places such as Hinchinbrook, various locations across
Cape York and Papua New Guinea. They are also common
throughout the Northern territory and much of Northern
WA.
In my 1965 edition of Grant’s Guide to Fishes there are some
interesting notes on Chanos chanos:
“a brilliant silvery fish reaching a length of four feet in local
waters inhabiting mangrove lined foreshores and estuaries.In
Papuan waters it has sprung to prominence as a light game
fish. These fish are better brought inshore by berlying with
stale bread and a floated line carefully baited with bread crust.”
This is interesting indeed considering it is a 1965 edition.
In Australia, regular milkfish captures have to date been
thought of as being restricted to berleying fish in Darwin
Harbour. There have been a few captures elsewhere
around the northern parts of Queensland and over in WA,
but only a few of these captures resulted from specifically
targetting milkfish in a ‘natural’ environment. Even on a
worldwide scale, milkfish in wild environs are an infrequent
capture at best.
They are the most frustrating species fly fishers have
encountered, bar none. Countless thousands of anglers
have cast at milkfish, with little return. And this has been
going on for over 30 years. In fact Lefty Kreh, that wonderfully
gifted teacher of fly fishing, once said that milkfish were one
species he would love to see worked out. The reasons are
pretty straight forward – they’re big, they fight clean, they’re
abundant, they’re in shallow water, and they cast be sight
cast too – the very basis for inclusion into the iconic fly fish
category (along with fish like permit), except for one small
detail – they don’t eat flies often. Or do they?
Recent evidence suggests that perhaps a significant step in
the milkfish equation has been partially solved. The solution
was, in hindsight, utterly straightforward, but aren’t most
solutions like that? Perhaps the difficulty lay in part with
the mentality of northern fly fishing, where species diversity
has required less specialisation and abundance of fish has
never pushed people to experiment with niche concepts
– and those who have generally done it when the fishing is
often poor and nothing else will bite – not the most effective
process for learning.
This step required amalgamating techniques most common
in freshwater environments – windlane techniques and dead
drifting small, unweighted flies on floating lines. Yup, that’s it
in a nutshell – fishing unweighted flies on floating lines down
windlanes.
This is perhaps one of the most well known trout fishing
techniques in places like Tasmania, yet the combination of
floating lines, small flies and dead drift presentations has just
been too different to popular fishing methods up north.

Earlier this year, on the Archer River in the Western Gulf
of Cape York, a couple of very enthusiastic Melbourne
anglers, Gary Dryden and Alf Preistley, made a bit of history

 captures on subsequent of trips.
ABOVE: this is why people chase milkfish – because they
fight harder than any other fish on the flats.
OPPOSITE: Small BMS patterns that mimic algae and
zooplankton have proved an important part of the puzzle.
by landing thirty of these fish in four short sessions. The
largest fish weighed 30 pounds and had a fork length of 110
centimetres. Here’s a measurement you won’t read often
– it had a fork width of 61 centimetres. We would find the
sort of windlane you’d expect on Arthur’s Lake, drift along it
until we saw fish sipping and rolling at the surface, and then
cast upcurrent of sighted fish and dead drift the fly to them
– which they ate – often. We have since repeated these
It is not quite as simple as driving up to feeding fish, hoiking
a Red Tag in their general direction, shouting “Tally Ho”
and hanging on while every milkfish south of the Tropic of
Capricorn comes charging over. There are critical nuances
to conditions and feeding behaviour that require observation
and understanding.
The fish have definite and different moods. The catchable fish
seem to feed on the surface in large schools on particular
tides – something I have seen them do for many years in
a number of locations. When they’re in this mood they are
not spooky and carry on this seemingly semi-pelagic gig
all round the boat. Food in these situations seemes varied
– small brown mangrove worms, minute jelly prawn-like
creatures that occasionally break the surface, green weed
and also a brown surface scum.
FISHING METHOD
There are two critical areas we’ve identified. Presentation
and micro-environmental conditions.
Fly fishers with a trout background have a distinct advantage
here, especially those who understand and practice dead drift
nymphing presentations. Down-and-across presentations
seem to work with definite regularity. Simply cast across
the current and let the fly dead drift right down the current
until the flyline straightens out. Here seems to be the critical
element of this presentation. Under no circumstances, for
any reason, ever, both here on earth and on Mars, do you
strip the fly. It’ll be ignored, as brutally and abruptly as those
rejections you got chasing girls as a spotty teenager. There
really is a simple commonsense reason for this – the food
the milkfish are targetting only move as fast the current
they’re in.
Presentations are most successful under conditions
conducive to the formation of windlanes. The physics of
the interaction between water and wind is unbelievably
complex and is best ignored completely unless you’re
a nerd. The most relevant thing to understand is that
windlanes form when wind blowing across a waterbody
interacts with the water surface in such a way that strips of
flattened water form in the same direction as the prevailing
wind, their position and shape adjusting to the prevailing
wind direction and intensity.
The other essential bit of information, which helps understand
why most windlanes have abundant food sources in them,
is that this complex interaction includes subsurface currents
– some windlanes push water down to the bottom, others
bring water, and associated food items, up to the surface.
Now you and I could quite easily swim through a windlane,
but when you’re only a millimetre or two long, the currents
are enough to funnel you and your mates up to the surface,
and pretty much keep you there. Which is why milkfish love
them so much – they sit there with open mouths and let the
current do the work for them.
You WILL know when you get a bite. Again, it is quite simple
and basic as the fish just simply pulls the line tight. Give a
small strip strike and look out.
TACKLE
Here is where it gets really interesting. In that first week of
experimenting we had bites from around sixty fish on a range
of flies, all of which had to be unweighted to get any sort of
a look in. The most productive flies matched the food items
we noticed in the windlanes, and included size 2 green and
brown BMS patterns, size 4 white/clear Bay Candies and

Crazy Charlies (with eyes removed) in size 4 and 6 in lime
green, tan and dark green. Hooks need to be lightweight to
facilitate that weightless drift, but strong enough to handled
sustained pressure and fast runs. I wish Gamakatsu would
make their SL12S hooks in size 4 and 6.
While there is still a lot to learn about fly selection, these
patterns work on fish when they are feeding like this and I
feel the important part of getting a bite is finding the fish that
are actively feeding, rather than those mooching around in
hot, super skinny water.
I prefer 20 pound Nitlon and yet still manage to bust a few
off. Common thinking would suggest dropping tippet size
down for smaller flies and spooky fish, but we have found
we just cannot hold onto the bigger fish with anything less.
I don’t believe we spooked too many fish with the heavier
leaders, but that will certainly become a consideration in
clearer water.
Floating lines are by far the best choice as they allow a
prolonged dead drift with unweighted flies in the surface
layers where the milkfish seem to be feeding most actively.
We have caught several fish on intermediates, but the
floaters are far better for consistent presentations.
We use nine weight rods which are only just enough for the
larger fish.
 What has been pretty spectacular has been the number
of multiple hookups we’ve had, with conversion rates
ranging from good to not so good, depending on sizes of
fish hooked. We’ve even had a triple hook up. This certainly
does suggest that we’ve found actively feeding fish.

Despite having landed a number of fish, and more

importantly, having been able to read the conditions enough
to be able to pick the best times and actively target milkfish,
I am sure there is more to learn. But for now, milkfish do
seem to be a genuine fly rod target up north, and dare I
say, imminently targettable. And all this on floating lines in
windlane conditions.

Steve Jeston owns and operates Hyperspace Sportfishing

and can be contacted on 0418779668 or hyperspace@
bigpond.com, or visit www.hyperspacesportfishing.com.
THE FIGHT

Oh my God! We all realise milkies can go hard but we’ve

hooked a fish that had a single straight line run of 800 yards
with the boat on the plane chasing it down. This particular
fish was the 110 cm fish and gave me a wake up call as
to what a thirty pound fish can do.Thirty minutes later the
fish was at the boat but out of range of landing net, and
this carried on for a further ten minutes. The sheer power of
these beasts is not appreciated until witnessed first hand.
Even fish around 70 cm are taking ten to fifteen minutes to
land. Some jump, but most simply just head off at speeds
that test the tolerance of any fly reel.